Overprotective DaddyBats Moments
by bluejay
Summary: A collection of moments wherein Batman goes overboard in protecting his kids.
1. Addiction

Notes: And this came about thanks to a Bludhaven chat session. To be taken semi-seriously only.

Notes2: This is also partly due to a childhood filled with Looney Tunes

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><p>The microwave beeped. Dick groaned and staggered to get his lunch out of the appliance, trying to keep from moving his right leg. He'd been caught in an exploding meth lab last night; okay, so he did get clear of the explosion, but while most of the pieces bounced off his suit, a couple were sharp enough to plunge deep into his thigh and calf muscle. But despite the wounds, Dick was inwardly glad it missed the major artery in his leg so he didn't bleed out while limping home.<p>

He sighed and set his lunch down on the kitchen counter - re-heated frozen stew courtesy of Alfred's care package - then plopped down on the lone stool. His leg throbbed and he rubbed an absentminded hand around the bandages to help ease it as he once again half-wished he had his own Alfred to cook and clean and stitch for him.

But he'd spent the early years of his childhood learning to look after himself with a thousand and one chores that included cleaning animal cages. Sure, he had help back then but it wasn't the kind of help given by a lone butler dedicated to catering to your needs. Dick smirked as he imagined the butler following him with brush and dustpan, sweeping away any dirt he leaves in his footsteps. It was a ridiculous image, of course, since Alfred did so much more than that.

Dick had just eaten half of the hearty stew when the doorbell to his loft rang.

"Hey, Shortpants," Roy Harper strode right past Dick as soon as the door was opened, barely even acknowledging the acrobat in favor of heading for the bedroom. "So where's your- Ah! Here it is!"

Dick limped in just in time to see the archer drag out a duffel bag and stuff clothes into it. "Uh, Roy-"

"Let's see, shirts, shorts, sweatpants..." The archer moved towards the dresser to toss more of Dick's clothes into the bag.

"Roy, what-"

"Heard about the explosion last night; you doing alright?" Roy paused in his packing to give him an appraising look. "Huh, you look fine. Must be a stroke of luck, eh?" Then he kept on packing.

"Roy, for Pete's sake!"

"Yeah?" The archer stopped for a moment, looking at him with an inquisitive eyebrow.

Dick gave a pointed look at the half-filled duffel bag in Roy's hands and asked, "Why am I packing for a trip I didn't even know about?"

Roy grinned and pushed the duffel towards him. "Congratulations! You've just won a surprise vacation courtesy of _moi _and the Titans. I'll be your designated driver," he sketched a mock-bow, "And you get to continue packing your clothes because there's no way I'm touching a bro's unmentionables while _I_ get your toiletries." He then proceeded into the bathroom. "And don't worry! I still remember _all _the necessities you're so particular about thanks to all those Titan camping trips."

"Roy..."

His voice was slightly muffled as he rummaged in the bathroom. "C'mon, Robbie, pick up the pace! We've got things to do, places to be and time's a-wasting!"

Dick sighed and continued the packing Roy had started, albeit slowly. His leg had made sure he couldn't move around much without pain. "At least give me a hint as to where we're going so I can pack accordingly?"

The archer poked his head out of the bathroom. "Plain civvies would be nice. We won't be going out of civilization, what with your bum leg and all."

Dick glanced down at his sweatpant-covered leg. There was no hint of the bandages showing or even a spot of blood to indicate where he got injured. "How'd you even-"

"Heard you dragging your foot around!" Roy waved a dismissing hand as he went back to rummaging.

Dick groaned and gave himself a mental slap on the head. Of course Roy would have noticed his bad leg. The archer hadn't gotten his years of hero experience by being obtuse. Keeping his bad leg stiff, Dick awkwardly bent to zip up the filled duffel.

"You done?" Roy came bursting out of the bathroom with a small pack which he then tossed into the still open duffel. Then in one stride, he scooped up the duffel, zipped it up and gave Dick a pointed look. "You're not dressed."

Dick rolled his eyes and grabbed a pair of loose jeans and a shirt to change into. The jeans had only reached his knees when he heard Roy's Titans communicator chirp. Roy immediately turned out of the bedroom and his voice was hushed when he answered, prompting Dick to frown while pulling up his jeans all the way. He was just about to step out of the room when Roy came rushing in.

"You done? Finally! We need to move your sorry ass out of Gotham _now_," Roy quickly grabbed Dick's hand and dragged him out of the apartment.

"Hey-hey! Easy!" Dick pulled back before he was forced to tear open the stitches in his bad leg. "Roy, if you don't mind-"

The Titans comms beeped urgently, bringing a panicked expression on the archers face.

"No time for that now!" Roy ducked under Dick's arm and half-lifted, half-dragged the acrobat to the door. Dick had no choice but to brace himself for the little jolts of pain that accompanied moving his bad leg.

In three minutes flat, he and Roy were climbing into Roy's nondescript rental Toyota and speeding away. Dick turned his head when he thought he spotted a familiar Bentley just pulling into his apartment block. But that was ridiculous - Bruce wouldn't just drop by his apartment on a whim and Alfred would have warned him beforehand. Would he?

"So where are we going?" Dick asked in the hopes of coaxing more information from his 'kidnapper.'

"Oh, just a little ways away from Gotham," Roy answered, turning the radio on and tuned it to a rock station. "I know this little motel we can stay in before heading out of the city."

"And after that?"

Roy shrugged. "I thought we'd hit Philly then Civic City."

"Roy."

"Then maybe we'll take a flight out of Metropolis and drop by Central, give Walls a shout."

"_Roy._"

The archer turned a roguish grin at him. "Hey, no worries, Shortpants, I've got our route covered."

Dick sighed and stopped himself from rubbing the bridge of his nose in frustration. "You didn't plan this whole trip out, did you?"

"A little spontaneity never hurt anyone!"

"Uh huh, then what's with all the rush?" Dick raised an inquiring eyebrow.

The impish grin returned. "Gotta keep on our toes, Robbie. It's not every day you get to go on a vacation with me!"

Dick sighed again and shifted his leg to a more comfortable position. There was something more to Roy's unplanned trip, but he needed to gather more intel if he was going to figure out what it was. He was 98% sure though, that it was going to be a very long day.

The rest of the afternoon they spent travelling from motel to motel, roadside stop to roadside stop. There was even a brief jaunt where Roy took him to one of the safe houses the archer was privy to for supplies. But with every stop they made, Roy always rushed them out and changed their course within an hour of their stay.

It was almost like...

"What are you running from?" Dick asked Roy as he was ushered out of the diner and back to the rental with barely a chance to finish his dinner. His leg was throbbing now from all the rushing and he took a glance back at the diner's restroom, spotting a weird looming shadow near the back but nothing else that would spook the archer.

"Nothing!" Roy shot back, practically carrying him in the mad rush to the car, "Just found out there's somewhere else I needed to be!"

Dick was half-shoved into the passenger seat with only a hiss of pain as Roy scrambled to the driver's side and slammed the door. In less than a minute, they were on the road once again.

"Okay Roy, this has gone on long enough," Dick announced gravely, "tell me what's going on or I get out of this car."

"Hey, you don't have to do something so crazy!" Roy protested. "Like I said, it's a vacation-"

"Roy." He gave the archer a glare that conveyed his utmost displeasure at the situation - a look that Dick learned from Alfred.

Finally, Roy relented. "Alright, alright. Listen," he sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "You know about that time Martian Manhunter separated his Oreo addiction from himself?"

Dick nodded cautiously; he was getting an idea of just what exactly the archer had been running from. "I read the report on that."

"Well, it's happened again. _Almost_! I mean, the addiction didn't come from J'onn, this time."

"Roy, are you saying what I think you're saying..."

"It's an alien virus! Thing. Whatever." The archer turned scared green eyes at him. "And it's infected Batman."

Dick quickly clamped down on the fear for his adoptive father as he quickly assessed the situation. "When did this happen?"

"This morning. The League sent a heads up to Titans Tower when they found out Batman's gone."

"This morning," Dick mulled over the morning's happenings - all fairly routine with him re-bandaging his wounds... Dick's eyes snapped open wide with a curse. "This morning. Bruce would have read my report from last night."

Roy reluctantly nodded and refused to look back at him.

Dick cursed. "Then that means he would have known I got caught in an explosion."

"I can still remember the day you broke your leg while fighting that giant robot. I could almost swear Batman was planning to lock you up in a vault after that."

"I was only grounded from Robin stuff until a couple of weeks after the doctor gave me a free pass."

Roy raised an eyebrow in surprise. "Just a couple of weeks?"

"He followed my patrols for a month just to keep an eye on me." Dick grimaced, remembering the constant prickly feeling of being watched that he had during every patrol for that month.

Roy winced in sympathy. "Yeah, that's why we - Donna, Wally, and I - thought we'd get you out of your apartment and keep you away from the Bat's hands."

"For how long?"

"Well..." The archer scratched the back of his neck. "We're not sure. Manhunter and Atom are working on a way to get the addiction out of Bats but... no one's sure when they'll be ready."

Dick let out his breath in a whoosh. There were times when Dick almost regretted being taken in by the Batman of all people, and this was one of them. For a man so focused on his crusade against wrongdoing, his paranoia and stubborn nature lends itself very well into overprotecting his charges.

"So if you're working on getting me away from Bruce as fast as possible," Dick shifted his throbbing leg to try to ease the pain, "then why'd they send you and not Wally?"

"Uhh..."

The archer's refusal to answer spoke volumes. "Roy, what happened to the League?"

Roy winced. "Bats beat the crap out of them."

Silence reigned for a moment as Dick waited for the archer to elaborate. When another moment passed without an explanation, Dick prompted, "Well?"

"Well what?"

"Why'd Batman beat the League?"

"Oh." Roy shrugged, his attention on his driving. "Wally said Batman declared it a lesson in not relying on their powers too much."

"Is anyone hurt? Much?"

"Bruises, mostly. And I think he gave Ollie a concussion."

"Ollie must have done something to annoy Bruce." Dick thought out loud.

"Heard he went out with Catwoman."

Dick sighed and rubbed his forehead. "Yeah, that'd do it." But he quickly straightened in his seat and asked, "So what's got you spooked every stop we make?"

To his surprise, Roy's face became slightly flushed. "You probably won't believe me but I swear it's the gods-damned truth, Rob." The archer gave him a serious look. "It doesn't matter where we end up. I keep seeing _him_."

Dick raised an eyebrow. "Come on, Bruce isn't psychic in any way."

"Told you, you won't believe me."

"Roy..."

The archer let go of the wheel to flail a bit as he admitted, "_it doesn't matter_! I take you to an Arrow safehouse and I see a batarang or two just...just lying there! Then I take you to a rest stop and I swear I'm seeing a pointy-eared shadow _lurking _behind the building. And I swear some of those places only Ollie and I know about personally."

"Maybe-"

"And don't tell me it's all a coincidence!" Roy tightened his grip on the wheel. "_Every _stop, Robbie? It _can't _be a coincidence."

Dick sighed and shifted his leg again. No matter what position he put it in, his leg just won't stop throbbing. He was tempted to just take a pain pill but it'll only tell Roy that all this moving around wasn't good for Dick's health and add to the archer's stress levels. "Did you check the car for bugs?"

"I did. Twice."

Dick sat back and wondered on the many ways Bruce could have set a tracker on him when he caught Roy's suspicious glance. "What?"

"Think he'd bug your stuff?"

They both paused to consider the idea before Roy found a safe spot to park and he climbed out to rummage through their belongings. Dick would've helped but Roy had noticed him frequently shifting his leg and insisted on checking their stuff himself while Dick rested; keeping Dick away from a paranoid Bat was one thing, injuring him further while keeping him away was another.

It shouldn't surprise Dick when Roy came back to report that he found nothing. He ran a hand through his hair and asked, "So, got a plan B?"

"Just one."

It took ten minutes, but when Plan B showed up in a blur of red, Dick aimed a gimlet eye at Roy. "_Wally's _your plan B?"

Roy shrugged. "He can go fast enough to play 'keep away' with Bats. That is," he turned to look at Wally, "if you're alright from your tango with him earlier."

"Speed healing," the speedster declared, "is the greatest. So, hop on!" He bent and offered his back to Dick.

Dick sighed again and took up his offer, stifling a hiss when his bad leg was jolted. And with a wave goodbye, they were off.

It wasn't Dick's first time to travel via speedster, and it wasn't even the first time he'd had to resort to this mode of transport while injured; but in non-insulated and unsupported civvies, Dick found the travel a lot worse. The pain riding up from his leg had gone to his stomach so he had to constantly fight against the nausea threatening to make him spew down Wally's front. It had gotten to the point where he couldn't keep his relieved groan from coming out as soon as they came to a stop.

"You okay there, Wingster?"

"Yeah, I'm-" his entire leg whited out with pain the moment he set foot to ground. "_No. _No, I'm _not _okay."

"Dick, hey, it's-" Wally froze in mid-crouch when he spotted Dick's leg. "Oh, oh man. Dick, you're...you're _bleeding through the bandages._"

Dick glanced down and true enough, there were several patches of blood seeping through his pants and were growing by the second. He cursed as he realized, "I must have torn the stitches."

"Oh man, here," Wally bent down again to offer his back. "I'll take you to the nearest hospital-"

"In civvies?"

"The nearest zeta tube to the Watchtower." Wally corrected.

"_No_."

The sudden voice behind him had Wally jumping about three feet in the air while Dick just swallowed down the bile that tried to climb out of his throat. He carefully turned to face Batman when Wally quickly interspersed himself between them.

"Oh no," Wally started backing Dick up to widen the distance between him and Batman, "you're not locking him away, or grounding him forever, or wrapping him up in bubble wrap, or putting him under house arrest, or siccing bodyguards on him, or sticking him in a glass house, or..."

"_Wally_."

The speedster stopped rambling at Dick's authoritative voice. Ever since his Robin days, Dick had made sure to train all his team members to respond to the Bat-voice with no questions. The original five had taken to it like ducklings - most of the time. But this was not the time to think about training Titans.

Dick firmly pushed Wally to one side and stepped closer towards Batman.

Caught between letting his best friend go _home _or handing him over to what might as well be a Bat-prison, Wally just looked at Dick and Batman and back. "Dick, uh, are you sure?"

"My leg is hurting, I tore my stitches, _I'm bleeding_." He offered a wan smile at the speedster. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I want to go home now."

Batman silently came to stand beside him and took his arm to wrap around his shoulders. Then with a push of a button on his utility belt, a rope ladder dropped to within arm's reach from the Batjet hovering overhead.

But Batman's final words before they were both taken up to the jet practically scared Wally witless for the next several hours.

_"I'll keep in touch."_

The first thing Batman did upon climbing aboard the Batjet is to settle Dick in the co-pilot's seat and set the coordinates for the Cave. Then he proceeded to cut Dick's pants leg and the bloodied bandages to take a look.

"They didn't mean to hurt me worse," Dick said, breaking the silence in the jet.

Batman didn't reply as he pointedly continued working on Dick's leg.

Dick sighed and sat up to take a look at his leg. "So how badly did I set back recovery time?"

"A week. Maybe two."

"Alas! He speaks!"

"Hn." Batman grunted and re-wrapped the leg in new bandages.

Dick studied the cowled face for a moment and asked tentatively, "You're not going to lock me up, are you?"

"Depends."

Dick raised an eyebrow. "Depends on?"

"On Alfred's and Leslie's verdict."

"Rest the leg, no strenuous exercises, painkillers and antibiotics, and stitches removed in a week." Dick recited. "I know the drill. But you're not going to lock me up. Right?"

Batman's lips curled up in a quick, small smile as he answered, "We'll see."

Alarm grew on Dick's face. "Wait. What happened to the alien addiction Roy told me about?"

The cowled head answered without turning towards him. "I'd synthesized an antidote the first time it happened, using a Joker venom antidote as my base. It's not a perfect cure but," he gave a slight shrug, "I have a better control over all my tendencies."

"So you zeta'ed to the BatCave and gave yourself a shot." Dick concluded. "But what about all the batarangs and the spooking Roy'd been experiencing the whole trip?"

"The batarangs had been planted over several weeks. Queen challenged me to find and break into his safehouses to check on their security. I'd also been following your route for two hours in the Batjet but didn't bother confronting you until West's arrival. The times when Harper claimed to have seen me?" The small smile showed longer this time. "He must have been jumping at shadows."

Dick chuckled in relief. "And here I was almost thinking you were a little psychic." He sat back in his seat to relax when the entire conversation replayed back in his head. "Wait a minute, you said it wasn't a perfect cure. So you mean you're not completely clear of the alien addiction, are you?"

Silence was his only answer.


	2. The Vault

Notes: A short chapter, this time. Still mostly about Dick since most of the ideas I've got involve him. The others will show in future chapters. Heck, if you've got an idea, send me a prompt and I'll consider it :)

suzanne and jay: I like overprotective daddy!Bats as well as father-son moments too :)

KK: As I've mentioned, I've got this one and the second part of this chapter with Dick. The others are still to be written - I've got ideas for Jason, Tim, Damian, and Cass. Barbara and Steph, not so much. For overprotective!Dick, I'll have to think up ideas for that, but I might write one or two :)

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><p>Ollie stifled another frustrated sigh as he watched worker number three hundred and five hurry past carrying a load of titanium sheets. The sheets wobbled and shone bright against the artificial lighting of the Watchtower. He was on duty in the JLA headquarters and had been assigned to look over the construction in progress that had started just a few days ago.<p>

Ollie inwardly sighed again and though Ollie's breath never left his lips, his companion didn't have trouble sensing it mentally.

"I believe they shall be finished within a few weeks' time," J'onn offered, similarly watching the workers scurry back and forth from the zeta tubes and hangar to the cordoned-off area. The noise levels of heavy construction were dampened only thanks to some strategically-placed soundproofing.

This time, Ollie didn't bother holding back the sigh. "That's not what the annoyance's for and you know it, J'onn."

"Perhaps you could enlighten me?"

The archer raised an eyebrow at the Martian, disbelieving for a moment that the other man didn't have a clue to the current thought running in his head. Maybe the Martian was being polite and kept himself from peeking into Ollie's thoughts... Ollie gave a mental shrug as he gestured with an arm to indicate the whole construction area. "You know what they're building, right?"

"A shelter," the Martian answered promptly, "For the more vulnerable parties within the Watchtower in times of crisis."

The Martian said it so calmly that Ollie thought the other man had truly believed it. But the archer knew better. "So that's what Ol' Spooky told you?" he scoffed.

"Batman explained it at the meeting, yes."

Ollie snorted and watched as a red blur suddenly made its presence known among the workers. "I didn't know Spooky managed to rope _him _into helping."

"I believe Flash volunteered in exchange for a full course meal provided by Batman's butler."

"Barry? No," Ollie was taken aback with surprise at first but it occurred to him that there wasn't just one crimson speedster around anymore and shook his head at the absurdity of Barry Allen offering to do manual labor in exchange for food. "No, Barry's too mellow to take that offer. Wally, on the other hand..."

J'onn's lips quirked upwards in a smile, "It was Wally's suggestion so he could help speed up the construction."

Ollie groaned and reached up to rub at his right temple. "Yeah, Wally's just the one to jump into the whole thing, especially considering who the shelter's for."

J'onn turned an inquisitive look at him. "What does having vulnerable parties in the Watchtower have to do with the third Flash?"

The archer gave the Martian a sceptical look in return. "You have no clue, do you? Didn't you take a look at the blueprints? It's pretty obvious."

J'onn shook his head. "No, I was engaged with Monitor Duty recently and wasn't able to observe."

"Alright, let me explain it to you," Ollie turned to point towards the back of the construction area. "Right there's the living space to be furnished complete with DVD's and Blu-rays by the hundreds, all video game consoles in existence with tons of games, and a small library of books. _Besides _that," he moved to point at another area nearby, "is a complete gym with all the proper equipments for a gymnast to eat his heart out."

The Martian's eyebrow ridge furrowed thoughtfully. "There doesn't seem to be enough space for several persons."

"Exactly." Ollie nodded, folding his arms against his chest. "There's space enough for _one_. One vulnerable person in a team of super-powered beings who also comes to the Watchtower several times a year for whatever reason, and no, I'm not talking about Spooky."

J'onn's eyebrow ridge furrowed deeper in thought before realization dawned on his face, maybe by glimpsing the kernel of idea from Ollie's thoughts. Or, the Martian could have deducted who else would Ollie be referring to by going through a mental list of JLA reserve members. After all, there was only one person Ol' Spooky would put in millions to keep safe while in the Watchtower.

But the archer just nodded again and continued to watch the construction. "Yep, it's not a shelter, not really. It's a vault."

"A _Nightwing _Vault." J'onn finished for him.

Ollie snorted. "Apparently, there's safe, and then there's _Bat-safe._"


	3. Alien Invasion

to: Dragonscorch, miss-meowness, aquablue15, and Ameliasiobon: Hope you like this one ;)

to: TheImaginativeFox: sorry this isn't your suggestion...at least, not yet ;)

Notes:I won't bother you with my excuses so, do enjoy the story.

Dick lay back on the reclining seat and tried for the umpteenth time to relax. He was surrounded by hundreds of movies and video games still in their unopened boxes - but he can't get himself to take any of them down. The still unused complete gymnastics equipment gleamed off to one side, while the entire room still smelled of new leather.

And all the while, the almost-hidden outline of the main entrance silently laughed at him from the corner of his eye.

It started when Watchtower picked up the signals of a small fleet of spaceships heading for Earth. When hails from the Tower were ignored, Supes ordered a quick check of the incoming aliens.

The fleet's sudden acceleration preceded Manhunter's revelation by two seconds; he declared that the aliens were of a race that frequently ran the gamut from thievery to intergalactic kidnapping and slavery; driving other aliens to steer clear of dealings with this particular race. With such a bad rep, it could only mean one thing: they were hostile aliens and they mean to do _bad things_.

All the League members currently in the Tower were sent on yellow alert while attempts were made to assess the fleet's combat-capability - and their intentions, for Superman was almost always an optimistic guy. But it didn't take long to figure _those intentions _out.

When the fleet changed course so it was approaching the Watchtower instead of Earth, Martian Manhunter came to Dick and told him of a remote access hub that would help direct the League members outside of the Monitor Room. Dick, thinking that Batman must have had a secondary computer system built in case the main one was compromised, followed the Martian.

The only clue he had that things weren't as he expected was when J'onn dematerialized as soon as the door was shut.

"J'onn?"

_I'm sorry, Richard, _came the mental message, _this is Batman's protocol._

"Oh no, he didn't," Dick ran to check on the door to confirm that yes, he'd been locked in and yes, Batman had installed security programs on the panel that wouldn't even allow him access. Who the heck speaks broken Latin laced with binary?

Dick groaned, slammed a fist at the shiny wall (ouch! Okay, not gonna do that again...), and sprawled at the nearest reclining chair. He then spent the next couple of minutes checking on everything in sight for possible alternate escape routes but so far, no such luck. Even the air vents were locked with that same Latinary code.

He was well and truly trapped in this place while aliens rushed the Watchtower. Oh, Bruce was gonna hear it from him good when he got home later.

So here was Dick, stuck in this freakin' panic room, bored to death despite all the amenities the place had to offer. He didn't even have live reports of what was happening outside and-

The door blasting inwards broke Dick from his thoughts.

His first impression of the figure that stomped in was hulking, armoured, and armed with a mean-looking blaster. It was enough for him to be on his guard when the alien approached and aimed the blaster at him.

The lizard-like head curled back its lips to show an impressive row of sharp teeth and spoke in hisses and clicks. Its gold-coloured armor almost immediately translated, "This is what the Police League wanted to keep safe? Huxi is not impressed."

"Well, we certainly didn't build this just to impress you." Dick retorted, his hands already reaching for his eskrima sticks.

The lizard's lips widened even further. "Not to impress, no. Just to keep Huxi _out_."

And the alien pulled the trigger.

But Dick was already moving. The stuffed armchair he'd been sitting on burst in a controlled explosion, missing Dick by inches. He dove to one side and brought out his eskrima sticks while rolling to his feet. The alien tracked him with its blaster and he rolled again to the other side to avoid the second blast.

"Keep still!" The alien scolded him. "Huxi will show Police League is stupid to keep little human safe."

"Yeah, like I'd make it easy for you!" Dick jumped over another blast, feeling it burn close to his hip. But his zigzagging pattern had brought him to just a couple of steps away from the alien. And it was turning to aim at him again. He dropped into a roll and kicked out at one of the alien's ankles.

It gave a startled cry and staggered, the blaster's nose aiming away. Dick shoved up and struck at the alien's head, dropping it to the floor.

"Thanks for opening the door," he told the stunned alien and started to exit the vault.

But that was when he felt something bump into the small of his back - then his entire body came painfully alive with bursting lights and burning fire. It felt like hours had passed, but when he could finally unscramble his brain enough to make sense, he realized the burst had taken only a minute or two.

And it felt like a freakin' lightning strike; like hundreds of fireworks exploding inside his body and breaking his thoughts into pieces. So by the time he could finally take input from his senses, he was staring at the floor and wondering why he was upside down.

Oh right, that's because another alien had hoisted him over its shoulder. A weak tug confirmed that his wrists were restrained behind his back.

"-stupid Huxi," the second alien was saying, "Captain said no destroying Police League's valuable. And look what Huxi do. Huxi should be happy Issri come by and check."

"Huxi had control." The first alien replied. Dick could only see glimpses of it through the corner of his eye walking beside the second alien. He couldn't move his head in any direction, and his muscles kept twitching and sending throbs of pain every second.

"Stupid Huxi. Doesn't matter if Police League valuable hurt or not; when Captain says no destroying valuable, no shooting everything."

The first alien made a clicking-grumbling sound but Dick wasn't paying any attention to the aliens now; because he'd just spotted a bright red cape lying limp on the ground.

"S-Sshuuup..." It felt like trying to talk with a huge wad of cotton in his mouth.

"Quiet, human," the alien carrying him growled and jolted his leg with a short burst of electricity. This time, the pain was localized to his leg and Dick focused on it to force the rest of his body to respond.

"Little human must be very valuable," The first alien hissed. "Police League keep wanting Issri to stop hurting human."

"Issri not impressed," The second alien answered with yet another jolt to his leg. "Little human is weak. One sparking and human is down."

"Stop...stop that...!" That was Superman's voice. A little weakened, but it still brought Dick relief to know that the hero was mostly alright.

"Stop this?" There was a smirk in the second alien's voice. Another jolt came and Dick jerked at the pain. He could move better now but he was still mostly paralyzed and oh how he hated not being able to move.

Then, the climate around the entire area dropped in temperature. It happened so quickly that the aliens paused to look around.

"Now you've done it." Sounds like Flash's speedster healing managed to get him conscious and talking at least. Dick hoped Wally's healing would be fast enough to help fight off these aliens.

"What done?" The first alien asked.

There came a cut off shriek from deeper within the Watchtower.

The first alien took up its blaster and went on alert. But there were no other sounds from the other aliens in the Watchtower, and this time, the second alien had to drop Dick to take up its own blaster.

"Oof!" Dick's breath got knocked out of him and he spent next couple of seconds getting it back. When he could breathe normally again, he gradually twisted his torso so he could sit up and see what was happening.

"You okay, 'Wing?" Flash had edged close to him in concern, unnoticed by the two aliens who were still scanning their surroundings in growing nervousness.

And that was when a dark shadow loomed over them all.

Both aliens aimed their blasters at the shadow's source but it was standing just beyond a corner, out of sight and out of the line of fire.

Dick however, knew that familiar shadow. And he also remembered that _someone _had stayed behind so Dick needed to get to Watchtower to upgrade the security protocols, and that _someone _still felt the lingering effects of a certain anti-inhibition virus.

So he tilted his head towards the aliens and called out, "They hurt me."

Dick didn't think it was possible but, he swore the temperature dropped even further.

"Hoo boy," Flash remarked, "looks like it's the Bat-glare of DOOOOOM (because one O isn't enough)."

And the lights went out.

What happened next, only Superman could say with any clarity. There was the sound of a blaster going off, followed by a shouted, "Stupid Huxi! Stop shooting!" Then the sounds of metal hitting metal, metal hitting the ground, two tazers going off, and finally, a couple of heavy thuds.

For a moment, there was only silence - broken by Superman's sheepish, "I'll just...get the lights."

There was a large presence standing just beside Dick. And even if he couldn't see it, he knew the hands that were helping free his wrists and the soft growl of, "How bad?"

"Just some bruises and maybe a couple of taser burns," he answered Bruce as he was helped to his feet. His muscles still twitched occasionally in reaction but it was fading. "How'd you get here?"

"Martian Manhunter contacted me as soon as he left you in the safe-room."

"You mean the Vault." Wally quipped from nearby.

"Oh yeah, speaking of which," Dick said, eyeing the shadowy figure that was Batman, "What's this new protocol of stuffing me in a friggin' Vault during a crisis?"

"A safety precaution." Batman replied without expression.

"A precaution for whom? For me? What makes you think-"

He was interrupted as the lights came on and Flash made a quick getaway with the words, "I'll leave you two to catch up." He left with a quick breeze in their faces.

Dick turned back to Batman. "So."

"So?"

"I heard the aliens had a Captain..."

"Already taken care of," Batman explained. "The artifact they used to breach the Vault's defences and subdue the League was weakened trying to open the Vault. It was easy for Martian Manhunter to crush it via telekinesis. After that, Watchtower was back in my control."

"Uh huh. And...?"

Batman looked at him blankly. "And?"

"And you're gonna dismantle the Vault, right?"

"No."

"_What? _Are you kidding me? Afterwhat just happened?"

"Obviously, the Vault's power source needs to have a reserve to reroute to. It was what allowed the aliens to enter. I should check on the latest from Thanagar..."


End file.
